Who is an Educated Child?

Who Is An Educated Child?

Nowadays, people mistake the knowledge of ABC and 123 for what education is all about. It is a very wrong notion and as such most contemporary schools emphasize more on knowledge while all other aspects of education like social behavioral patterns and values such as respect, honesty, sharing, taking turn, culture and lots more are paid less attention or completely neglected. On this ground, despite all odds, Great Heights Academy singled out of the manifolds with a paradigm shift. Unlike other schools, here every aspect of education carry’s equal weight. Therefore, a child must acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and norms of the immediate society to be considered educated. Hence, the question ‘who is an educated child?’ 

According to Wikipedia, education in its general sense is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and norms of a group of people are transferred formally or informally from one generation to the next through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training or research. Based on this definition, the word ‘education’ is more inclusive than mere ‘knowledge’ as the latter is embedded in the former. This is to say that, knowledge is a subset of education.

However, Great Heights Academy in the aspect of imparting knowledge is always at the finish line. No leaf is left unturned to ensure that pupils reach the zenith in acquisition of knowledge of all subjects. This is so because only qualified and experienced teachers are given space within the enclave of the school to occupy. Based on the advocacy of the school management for the fact that, no child can develop beyond the standard of his/her teachers. Still on knowledge instilment, the school splits subject like Mathematics, English Language, and Social Studies into various areas which are handled in separate periods by different teachers with very close supervision.

Manipulative skill is another aspect of education which the school is ever mindful of driving into the pupils by exposing them to E- learning activities like system coupling, typesetting, desk top designing, computer games, and lots more.  More so, not even skills in the area of Cultural and Creative Art is marginalized as pupils once in every week, are engaged with activities like pattern design, colour mixture, dying, making picture frames, mat making, molding with clay or paper mache etc. To mention but few, areas like Home Economics, and P.H.E are considered avenue through which the children conveniently acquire other skills too.

Because Great Heights Academy believes that Knowledge without social values is not enough to make an educated child, class council meeting was introduced whereby pupils are encouraged to hold formal weekly meetings to discuss about pressing issues in their various classrooms under the guidance of the class teachers. On every Tuesday, Club activities are also carried out by the pupils as they come together according to the club they belong to learn collectively. Better still, drama is another thing that must be mentioned here. Pupils from various classes contest in drama competition every year at the end of which awards, trophies and prices are given. All these are done to improve the pupils’ social skills and values like cooperation, esprit de corps, companionship, tolerance, patience and so on. This is to better prepare the children to socially fit into their immediate societies.

Moreover, being that Great Heights Academy is an Islamic school, enhancing and maintaining the Islamic beliefs of the pupils cannot be neglected at all cost. It is one of the fundamentals of the school. In the bid to realize this, Islamic moral instruction is designed to hold on every assembly whereby pupils are admonished. So also, the school management ensures that every child observes salat regularly in school and on every Monday, I.R.S and Qur’an teachers interchangeably present a brief admonishment after Zuhur prayers. In line with that, pupils start every day normal classroom activities with Quran Session which lasts for 45 minutes except on Fridays. In fact, Average children in Great Heights Academy, without even enrolling in Madrasa, can still be religiously sound.

 Lastly, inculcation of cultural and customary norms are not truncated either. Once in every academic year, cultural day is organized where pupils are grouped randomly into different ethnic groups. On such occasion, pupils in accordance with their various ethnicities speak their languages and display different elements of culture like modes of greeting, traditional attires, native dishes, colourful and spectacular ornamentals. To cap it all, they at the end of the day sit and eat together which shows the unity in their diversity. This also helps the pupils to appreciate and better understand other ethnic groups coexisting. The aim is to change their negative preconceptions about people around them.

In conclusion, before I draw the curtain, I will like to confidently answer the question “who is an educated child?” as a product of Great Heights Academy. This is because the school’s system is in total agreement with every inch of the definition of “education” as given by Wikipedia. Any child whose school training fails to reflect in his/her skill, social values, belief, norms, and custom, is regarded an educated illiterate.

                                                                                                                    BY: Sulaiman Abdullahi Albaji